NOTES ON CHAOS AND PATTERN OF TREES IN WINTER

Perhaps it would be of interest to describe the origins of Chaos and Pattern of Trees in Winter. The idea for this portfolio came from a momentary observation in 2012 while driving on a country road near our home. There is a point where different species of tree branches on both sides of the road overlap. Lovely in the spring, summer and autumn, the beauty of this small scene became compelling during the winter when the leafless branches could show their structure.

I was fascinated by the random complexity generated by layers of branches with the open sky beyond. The simple symmetries and patterns of a single branch in one plane were rendered fabulously complex in the many planes in three dimensions. Seeing this complexity compressed and transformed onto the plane of the camera’s viewfinder opened the door to the visual and intellectual content of this portfolio.

In addition to chaos and pattern, visual complexity and simplicity would also be an important part of this portfolio. Some people find the extreme simplicity of Zen Buddhist paintings very beautiful. Yet people also find beauty in the apparent chaos of some very busy abstract art; e.g. works by Jackson Pollock. For these notes, it is helpful to merge the concept of complexity with chaos and the concept of simplicity with pattern.

Photographers have a long-standing fascination with patterns. It might be argued that the process of framing the picture in the camera encourages the search for pattern and gives delight once found. Even if a pattern is not at the focus of a Zen painting, its simplicity and directness implies patterns, even a pattern that is only partially realized.

Isn’t there a calming feeling of recognizing a pattern and a disquieting feeling of not being able to see one? And isn’t there a sense that even a simple pattern is somehow indicative of a deeper structure or meaning? Also, does a sense of beauty seem to require either randomness or a recognizable pattern…beauty in simplicity…beauty in complexity without much of a middle ground?

In the rebelling against the visual comfort of patterns is a fascination for the disorganizing of “as-is”. Further, as “chaos” works its way into modern thought and life, it also deserves to be included in “art as conceptualization”.

In trying to more fully understand the fascination with the transformation of three-dimensional complexity into the two-dimensional image, I found it necessary to think about pattern recognition. However, pattern recognition not in the sense of generating algorithms for machine learning, but in everyday experience, in art and in our connectedness to our ancestral roots. To this end, trees and their branches became design elements in a study of the recognition of visual patterns.

Trees and branches lend themselves to a study of pattern recognition because we start from almost immediate recognition of the context…it’s a tree…they are branches. Further, the laws governing tree growth and branch formation follow a fairly simple geometry.

Pattern recognition may lead to determining the genus and species, but then what? Is this pattern recognition similar to others, wherein recognition is followed by an intellectual and emotional closure, where recognition is sought in curiosity and then dismissed with finality…where recognition is limited to identification, as both a beginning and an end? Or, might “recognition” open a door to a more profound experience?

These photos ask the viewer to join the photographer in looking beyond mere identification. In addition to the complexity arising from layers of juxtapositions, the viewer is asked to consider the negative spaces formed as branches are isolated from their trees as well as when branches and trees are juxtaposed with rocks. The form and color of these rocks provide textural elements to both visually clarify and confuse. The viewer is asked to feel, and even accept, an uneasy balance between known forms and surprising complexity.

Responding to this dichotomy takes the form of question upon question. For example, when confronted with a scene of great detail, do we assume it is chaotic if there isn’t an immediately recognizable pattern? Without seeing a localized pattern, a sense of beauty may yet arise from realizing the whole picture anew in a revelatory almost cathartic moment.

Or, what if we sense that we might have just seen part of a pattern? Do we look for elements to complete the partial pattern, and how much of the pattern do we need to see to be visually satisfied? How do we respond to patterns that are not clearly delineated to textbook perfection? How do we “complete” the pattern in our mind’s eye?

I found it interesting to try to imagine what very early peoples might have ascribed, perhaps subconsciously, to the necessity of recognizing patterns amid chaotic arrangements and the pleasure, in addition to the safety, such recognition might have provided. Was there a visual comfort in seeing a pattern, or could there also have been some delight in the surrounding visual chaos?

In 2015 I was ready to make photographs. The photography involved searching for those particular juxtapositions of trees and branches that would illustrate varying degrees of complexity and simplicity, heighten the sense of chaos and pattern, and that would continue the magical feeling of the first observation. Thousands of trees were viewed; very few were selected. To maintain the strength of the leafless structures, the photographs were made before bud-break.

The portfolio is divided into two groups: those images that I felt were stronger in color and those that I felt were stronger in black and white. It is hoped that this division might help the viewer explore the role of color in their own sense of perception; e.g., how trees and branches are seen and felt? Several images have a blank background in order to heighten the awareness of negative space in the interplay of chaos and pattern.

The photography started in Tompkins County, NY continued in Tioga and Lycoming Counties, PA and concluded in the Adirondack State Park, NY. After a year’s edit, prints were made in 2016.